In response to a climate change denier’s recent challenge to debate him, UNLV professor Ben Leffel had one condition: The debate had to be held “in the form of a WWE professional wrestling match.”
It’s one of the many bold tactics that Leffel takes when confronted with the firehose of misinformation swirling around the internet. He’s well aware that 99 percent of peer-reviewed science supports the existence of human-caused climate change, with a direct connection to carbon emissions.
“I’m not going to give charlatans a platform,” Leffel, 38, said in a recent interview. “You don’t put a geologist on stage with a flat-earther. This should not be controversial.”
Leffel, who studies the response of the public and private sector to climate change, has made a home base out of Las Vegas, a city with visible environmental shifts. It’s a much different terrain from Cleveland, Ohio, where he grew up, or Ann Arbor, where he did his postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Michigan.
Drought fueled by high temperatures has drained Lake Mead to only a third full, and the Clark County coroner recorded 527 deaths related to extreme heat last year.
And at a time when the Trump administration is clashing with universities over diversity initiatives, students’ right to protest and cuts to research funding, Leffel, who doesn’t have tenure, has been anything but quiet.
“What do we have to lose in the environment we’re in?” Leffel said. “There are scenarios in which it’s important to be vocal without measured language, because systems of oppression thrive on obedience, anticipatory obedience and fear.”
The Trump administration has launched a crusade against what it perceives as bias in higher education, withholding funding until universities comply with demands to revise policies that Republicans claim are rooted in racial diversity instead of merit.
It’s made combating anti-Semitism on university campuses a top priority, as well. The State Department has revoked international student visas for those involved in protests against U.S. involvement in the ongoing war between Israel and Hamas, a militant Islamic group that governs the Gaza Strip.
“To every college president,” President Donald Trump said at a rally last year, “vanquish the radicals and take back our campuses for all of the normal students.”
A visible face on campus
Whether it’s advocating for state policy or commenting to the media, Leffel finds himself as one of the few UNLV professors who regularly speaks up on the topic of climate change.
“All of us are approaching this climate crisis in different ways and, at times, we can get really passionate about the intransigence and misinformation that is out there,” said Kev Abazajian, one of Leffel’s colleagues who teaches at the University of California, Irvine.
Leffel was the only professor who spoke at a student protest in April against the Trump administration’s immigration policies. The protest was spurred by the revocation of four international student visas, and he delivered remarks about how professors are struggling with cuts to research funding.
Research funding has been on the list of sacrifices the Trump administration has said are necessary to cut the bloated federal deficit. Leffel has been forced to rethink how to word proposals for research funding, especially considering that studies that use the words “climate change” have been a target.
But Leffel, who teaches a corporate sustainability course and created a UNLV “micro-credential” on the subject, sees an opportunity for the private sector to continue its climate-related promises. A 2024 study, of which he’s the lead author, determined that corporations are usually most successful in de-carbonization efforts because of state and local policy that requires energy-efficient buildings.
“It’s a really, really uncertain time, but it’s also a time for corporations and philanthropies to step up,” Leffel said. “It’s time for them to make their voices heard and to put their money where their mouth is, literally.”
The power of cities, and Las Vegas
Las Vegas was a facet of the TEDxLasVegas talk he delivered in April. The video had not been published online as of Thursday.
Like much of his research, the talk centered around how cities, not federal governments, drive meaningful reductions of carbon emissions that cause climate change throughout the world.
He spoke of how, looking down from space, Las Vegas is the brightest city on the planet. Leffel praised MGM Resorts International’s decision to build a solar farm in Lincoln County to power its resorts — and generate power for nearby residents.
“If we can power that with all renewable energy, then that is a spectacle to the world of what is possible,” Leffel told the crowd.
One example of the power of cities in mitigating climate change is the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives, or ICLEI, the biggest global network of governments working on sustainability, founded in the 1990s. Las Vegas is not a member.
Leffel helped digitize the group’s founding documents and spent time in Irvine, the first city in the country to implement an ordinance banning chlorofluorocarbons in packaging, air conditioning and home insulation. Those chemicals had been contributing to the depletion of the planet’s ozone layer, and the ordinance garnered international attention.
The partnership between a UC Irvine scientist and the city mayor on local policy helped inspire the creation of ICLEI.
“What people don’t know is that he then teamed up with the mayor, who was a prolific activist at the time, and they said, ‘OK, let’s get cities to pass CFC bans from the bottom up,’” Leffel said. “Nations aren’t moving fast enough, so why not have all the cities of the world implement things from the bottom up?”
‘No time to put your head down’
Going forward, Leffel would like to see more science-driven policy like that in Nevada. In this year’s legislative session, he teamed up with Las Vegas environmental groups to advocate for Assembly Bill 96, the law that requires big Nevada cities to create extreme-heat mitigation plans before July 2026.
Most of all, Leffel wants Nevadans to understand the magnitude of how climate change will affect their everyday lives.
Hanging in his UNLV office is a quote that says, “There was a time when only God could end the world.” It’s a reference to how existential Leffel feels the threat of climate change is today.
“This is no time to put your head down,” he said.
Contact Alan Halaly at ahalaly@reviewjournal.com. Follow @AlanHalaly on X.